With the devastating loss of lives and livelihoods, it’s strange to hear prognosticators speak of “opportunities in the New Normal.” But history tells us it’s true. If you want your organization to lead in the New Normal — or the Next Normal or whatever the recovery period is called — what are some steps you can take? How can you position your organization to capitalize on massive shifts in consumer beliefs and behaviors moving forward? How can you escape from the depths of the coronavirus-induced global recession? And how does the cloud—long considered an emerging part of the modern customer service experience—increasingly vital for such resilience? We’ve ...

We all have a new normal right now—one bound to persist in some form even after we return to our regular lives. And that’s true for contact centers as well. For nearly a year, customer service organizations have dealt with unexpected, increased demands for customer experience (CX) flexibility and agility. These temporary demands have evolved into a new, heightened level of customer service permanently expected by customers forced to sacrifice vendor loyalty for the fulfillment of short-term needs. That’s why all that happened in 2020 changed the minds of many CX leaders who, pre-pandemic, were hesitant to embrace the cloud as the preferred deployment option ...

The pandemic has shifted the world of work and elevated the importance of agility in contact centers to meet the moment – whatever that moment may be. Right now, it’s working from home (WFH) which presents significant challenges for many and addressing these challenges successfully is critical at a time when customer expectations are also changing. Cloud-based communications systems offer far more flexibility than traditional on-premise solutions. Agility is the name of the game and the ability to implement remote working and scale up and down with 99.5% guaranteed uptime means it is the perfect time to transition to the cloud. Customer service starts with ...

5 Ways COVID-19 Shifted Customer Expectations You’ve probably heard industry experts talk about how customers expected more from contact center representatives during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how many of those changes are here to stay. We’ve heard that, too. But what exactly do they mean? After all, customers always have had high expectations for the customer service representatives they entrust with their time. That’s why many companies safeguard their customer experience by purposefully designing tiered customer support teams, so even the most complex requests can be quickly resolved. We needed to know more. So, to find out exactly how customer ...

Finding the New Normal | Moving to the Cloud Over the past several weeks we’ve been hearing from a lot of you about the challenges that you’re facing due to COVID-19, especially as it relates to things like maintaining business continuity, having to rapidly deploy and manage a remote workforce, maybe adding new capabilities to address new problems, etc. For those of you that have your contact center and your Calabrio WFO solution on-premises, we understand that adjusting to these changing environments and adjusting to our new normal may have been a little more challenging for you versus a company that has their solution in the cloud. Several of you have ...

Serious, unusual circumstances like a pandemic tend to shine a spotlight on the call center insights that matter most. That’s because stressful times and uncertain economic conditions can bring out the worst in everyone: customers’ emotions might run high while their patience hits an all-time low, and agents might forget or forego some of their training due to busier schedules or distractions created by new, work-from-home environments. As a call center leader, you want to manage and optimize your call center team, so agents operate at a high-performing level despite any added, unanticipated intensity. You want to preserve and guarantee a superior customer ...

Now more than ever, it’s crucial we understand what challenges our customers are going through and develop ways we can help. The foundation of this process is listening and communication. The last few weeks has impacted us all in different ways. There is a heightened sense of anxiety and uncertainty as we deal with the implications of COVID-19. The business objectives your organization set forth at the beginning of the year have likely been either fundamentally altered or have needed to be adjusted during this time. Customers, employees, family members all are looking for a sense of predictability and stability during this time. It makes communication and ...

With so much going on in the world and many “fires” to put out, it’s tough to think about the future of our contact centers. But in case you want a break from the realities of COVID-19 and the havoc it is causing around the world, I am going to share some of my thoughts about the future of contact center workforce management (WFM). To begin with, if we had new-gen WFM solutions with real-time, adaptable intelligent intraday management modules supported by mobility in our contact centers today, we’d all be putting out fewer fires, but I am getting ahead of myself. During the last weeks, I’ve spent the majority of my time sharing operational practices for managing ...

Flexibility in contact centers means many things to many people. It usually means making life easier for agents, enabling them to strike the all-important work/life balance. Or, it can apply to the automated technology that makes flexible working possible. Most recently, another meaning has emerged that focuses on the growing trend for companies to increase their business agility by introducing flexible or reduced hours working contracts. As we all know, organizations everywhere continue to face the reality of squeezed budgets. In a race to cut costs, it’s easy to see how the concepts of zero or reduced hours contracts and offering time-off-without-pay (TOWP) ...

Contact center as a service (CCaaS) makes the power of a modern contact center available to any business, regardless of budget or technical expertise. With it, any size company can move faster and be more competitive. These results are a big reason why CCaaS is projected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 15 percent between 2019 and 2021—and why CCaaS is a critical part of Calabrio’s go-to-market plan. Our strategy is to partner with leading CCaaS as well as CPaaS (Communications platform as a service) vendors that offer unique solutions and possibilities in their own rights, then quickly deliver Calabrio ONE integrations that immediately benefit our customers. ...

Call center leaders use quality management evaluation forms to review and document the work of call center agents, such as how they handle calls. Used optimally, these forms embody a contact center’s most important objectives, are the gold standard against which agent behaviors are measured and deliver much-needed data used for reporting purposes. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the specific behaviors documented in the evaluation form. Used to reward agents for positive performance, promote a new initiative and monitor behavior against compliance requirements, KPIs come in two common types: core KPIs and custom KPIs. Call centers use core KPIs ...